Turning History into Fiction

March 21, 2017 @ 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Novelist Rachel Billington has published more than twenty novels in a writing career that spans
nearly fifty years. In her most recent novel, Glory (2015), she describes the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War through the eyes of the participants and their wives and girlfriends at home. The inspiration for the story began with her research about her grandfather’s war record. He was killed at Gallipoli and what she found revealed his quiet bravery and the profound effect of his death on her father, Frank, Lord Longford, the Labour politician and prison reformer.

Rachel Billington, will discuss the challenges of writing fiction based on major historical events and, on a more personal note, how she gently overturned family myths about her grandfather.